In My Own Words, Chapter 17
by Laura W
Summary: My gift to elem in the VAMB Secret Summer Exchange. Janeway looks back on the night that changed her life. And yes, the title is correct. It'll become clear when you read it. J/C.


**NOTE**: This was written for the VAMB Secret Summer Exchange. My request from elem was for: _Anything J/C (fiddles, vids etc) - and if it is a story, something with a happy ending. _I couldn't have asked for a better request to jolt me out of my writer's block funk. Enjoy. Partial explanation of where this came from at the end.

**In My Own Words**

**By Kathryn E. Janeway**

**Chapter 17**

**The Tattooed Terror, the Devious Drone, and the Relentless Redhead: **

**Or, How Seven Years Without Can Make People Do Really Silly Things**

Chakotay is about the sexiest thing ever to walk on two legs.

That got your attention, didn't it?

In fact, I imagine a large number of readers — former crewmates, hopeless romantics, women of a certain age — will skip over all the pedestrian details of my early career and even the more exciting chapters about my years trekking through the Delta quadrant in the hopes that they'll find something like this, and that finally, after twenty years of careful evasion and stony silence, I will at last tell the story we've managed to keep under wraps for so long.

Reflexively, I'm inclined dodge the matter for a little while longer, but what would be the point? He and I are both pushing seventy — one of us pushing much harder than the other, thank you _very_ much — and while no one but us knows the exact details of what happened that night, the resolution is obvious. It is engraved into the silver wedding bands we both wear, carved into the foundation of this house in Lake George, and etched in the laugh lines on our faces.

So what would be the harm in telling the Universe exactly what happened that night...and exactly how exquisitely, mind-numbingly, toe-curlingly _good_ it was?

As I write these words, he glances over at me and smiles. The look in his eye makes me catch my breath. I can't help but smirk at him, and he quirks an eyebrow at me.

"I think it's time to tell the truth," I respond to his unspoken query.

He nods toward the journal open on my lap and the old-fashioned fountain pen in my hand. "Isn't that kind of the point of writing one's memoirs, Kathryn? Telling the truth?"

"It is," I say. "But this is different. It's time to tell the story we've been avoiding for two decades." I tap my pen on the page. "It's time to tell The Truth."

He catches his breath in sudden understanding. "Oh," he says. "_That_ Truth."

"Yes." He nods and looks away. "I'm finally out of offices to run for, and you left the Commandant's chair almost a decade ago. So there won't be any professional repercussions."

"'Professional,'" he mutters.

I raise my eyebrows at him. "Are you worried about _personal_ repercussions?"

He smiles. "No, not really."

"Then what are you worried about?"

With a shake of his head, he reaches over to the low table in between our Adirondack chairs and grabs my coffee cup. "Need a refill?"

"Sure," I answer. I don't really want another cup of coffee, given that the sun has disappeared behind the sloped roof of our house and evening is descending on the lake. But I know the act of strolling into the kitchen and making a cup of coffee will give him the time he needs to formulate a reply; Lord knows I've used the tactic on him enough to recognize it.

Five minutes later, he returns not with a full coffee cup, but with a chilled carafe of Chardonnay and two glasses. While I wait, he fills a glass and hands it to me. "It's not that I'm worried, Kathryn," he says.

"Then what is it?" I sip my wine and wait while he fills his own glass, but no answer is forthcoming. "You're not embarrassed, are you?" I tease.

This elicits a chuckle from him. "Not anymore." He settles back into his chair — a meter to my left, where he's been for more than twenty years — with a sigh. "Just...please don't make me out to be _too_ much of an idiot," he sighs.

"Don't worry," I say, and reach over to pat his cheek. "You did a fine job of that all by yourself, sweetheart."

=/\=

To begin again:

Chakotay, my former First Officer, closest friend, and husband of twenty years, is just about the sexiest thing ever to walk on two legs.

Prior to meeting him in person, I'd studied the images in his service record and intelligence file. They didn't do him justice. No stiff Starfleet portrait or blurry reconnaissance shot could have possibly prepared me for the overwhelming _presence_ of the man who coalesced on the Bridge of my ship. He wasn't the tallest man I knew - Tom and Tuvok are both taller - and Harry is at least as broad. It wasn't his size that took me by surprise upon that first meeting. It was his charisma. His magnetism. It was the overwhelming animal _pull_ of the man that captivated me in that first second and has never let me go, not even after the _Equinox_ and Jaffen and the Borg and Seska and Species 8472.

Not even after Seven of Nine.

It took me a long time to realize that, and even longer to admit it.

About two months after our return to the Alpha quadrant, I heard through the grapevine that Chakotay and Seven had gone their separate ways. Their parting, according to my source, was abrupt but amiable, and precipitated by Seven's rapid realization that she had a whole quadrant of eligible partners to choose from and to irrevocably attach herself to one particular partner – indeed, her _first _partner_ - _without exploring all the options before her was, in addition to being woefully premature, not at all sound scientific practice.

Somewhere along the line, she also realized that limiting herself to one particular _type_ of partner was very narrow-minded.

When I asked for clarification on that point, my source blushed furiously. "You'd better ask Chakotay," she said. "It involves him, too."

I paused with my coffee cup halfway to my lips, squinting at her in the dim, early morning light of the HQ commissary. "Well, of course it involves him, B'Elanna," I said. "He's the one Seven just broke up with."

"Oh, no," B'Elanna said. "She didn't exactly break up with him. It was mutual, very, very mutual, and you need to ask Chakotay because you don't know the half of it."

That conversation got me thinking…and wondering…and remembering the strong, strange, almost transcendent connection Chakotay and I once had. The memories brought with them a wave of regret, and a fierce, unstoppable longing to know if there was anything left of the promise that had once lived between us.

So I waited what I thought was an appropriate amount of time after his split with Seven – one month, minus the two days I just couldn't wait anymore – I gave myself a pep talk, and I did something impulsive and probably reckless.

I asked him out to dinner.

He turned me down flat.

I chalked it up to bad timing. He wasn't long past his ill-fated relationship with Seven, and he was no doubt just as busy as the rest of us were with settling into his new position and his new life. After visiting from Trebus soon after our return, his sister Sekaya had moved permanently to San Francisco. Surely he was spending a great deal of time with her as well. So I waited a while longer – two more weeks – and I tried again.

The second time he turned me down, it really was bad timing. He was hip-deep in preparation to take his Cadets on a six-week training mission and simply couldn't spare an evening, not even for his old Captain. "When you get back?" I asked, trying to keep a tone of neediness from creeping into my voice. I didn't _need_ him back in my life. Did I want him back in my life? Oh, yes. Very much so.

Especially when he nodded and smiled, and I found myself transfixed by the movement of his luscious lower lip. _"Sure,"_ he said. _"After I get back."_

The third time he turned me down, I tried not to take it personally.

I was not altogether successful.

When he told me he was "too busy to get away," I sat back from my comm screen and forced a smile. "Okay," I said with a wink. "I can take a hint. Take care of yourself, Chakotay." I reached to cut the connection, but he stopped me.

_"Wait. What do you mean, you can 'take a hint'?"_

I shrugged. "I've invited you to dinner three times, and gotten three refusals. I'm not so old and out of practice that I can't tell when a man's not interested."

My husband may be the sexiest thing ever to walk on two legs, but when he's confused, he's nothing but painfully cute.

He frowned, his salt-and-pepper brows drawn together in the middle of his forehead. _"Not interested?"_ he echoed. _"Kathryn, were you asking me out on a _date_?"_

I placed my chin on my hand. "I guess I _am_ out of practice, if you couldn't even tell."

His mouth fell open for a startled half-second. _"I didn't think..."_ he stammered. _"I thought you wouldn't...I mean, I never suspected you..."_ He stopped this flow of inanities with visible effort, then leaned toward the screen. Suddenly there was that presence again, that magnetism, even though we were on opposite sides of the 'Fleet grounds. _"I'm very flattered,"_ he explained, and my heart dropped into my stomach despite the flutter of attraction. _"But I still have some processing to do."_

"Processing?"

He nodded. _"Getting home, seeing the crew settled, having my sister here..."_

"Seven," I offered.

_"Seven,"_ he confirmed, and I waited. He sighed. _"I not only need to process that whole...thing,"_ he said, rather artlessly, _"but I need to talk to you about it. Just...not yet. Please."_

Truthfully, I wasn't sure I'd _ever_ be ready to talk about that, so I waved the whole topic away. "And you have a new position."

He nodded_. "A position that's keeping me busier than I ever imagined."_ He held up a stack of PADDs for my inspection. _"Seems I always have papers to grade or tests to evaluate. These kids deserve my best, and I'll be damned if I give them anything less."_

I couldn't fault him for his dedication to his charges; he and I are very alike that way. "So you need time."

_"It's a lot of changes at once."_

"You usually deal with change well."

_"I know but..."_ He ran his hand through his hair, something I'd rarely seen him do in all the years we'd known each other. I realized he must really be at loose ends. _"It's almost too much," he admitted. "I feel like I need a break, but the end of the term is still a month away."_

"I understand," I said. "But don't be surprised if I ask you out to dinner again in a month."

His gaze was steady and warm. _"I hope you will, Kathryn."_

I pressed my fingertips to the screen. "You know I will."

He reached out to me in the same fashion. _"Thank you,"_ he said. _"Good-night."_

"Good-night."

A month.

He wanted me to wait a month.

Well, we'd waited seven years to get even to this point, when the unspoken attraction between us was spoken at last, even if obliquely and over a comm connection. Another thirty days surely wouldn't kill either of us.

Probably.

Alone and more than a little dejected, I closed down my office and headed across the 'Fleet grounds as the sun was setting over the Golden Gate. Unwilling to face my empty little townhouse on Lombard Street, I found myself wandering east of the Presidio and into the neighborhood where a number of my crew had settled. Tom and B'Elanna's house on Chestnut Street was dark and quiet; they were probably both still at work in the Prototype and Design building, or maybe spending the evening at Owen's house. Mike Ayala's place was equally unoccupied, and through the front window of their house on Laguna I could see the Wildmans settling down to dinner. I smiled, watching Gres help a heavily pregnant Sam into a chair while Naomi looked on, beaming.

As I crossed Bay Street heading north toward Fort Mason Park, a familiar voice rang out. "Admiral? Admiral Janeway?"

I turned around to find Seven of Nine ambling east on Bay Street toward me. "Seven! How are you?"

She'd turned in her silver catsuit in favor of a uniform, but she still towered over me in the four-inch heels she'd always favored. "I am well, thank you. And you?"

"Fine, just fine. What brings you to this neighborhood?"

She inclined her head toward the park. "There is a vegetarian deli and farmer's market on the pier," she said. "We have planned a picnic in the park. I am meeting someone there to secure provisions."

I smiled. "Sounds lovely," I said, noting the first person plural pronoun. Since her breakup with Chakotay, I'd heard that Seven had quickly moved on to a new suitor. Interesting that her new beau was also a vegetarian like Chakotay...or maybe she had made that lifestyle decision for herself. "I didn't know there was a deli on the pier."

"It is relatively new."

"Mind if I tag along?"

Seven shifted from foot to foot in apparent discomfort, then seemed to come to a rapid decision. "Of course," she said, and then, "This way," in her typically forthright manner.

We set off through the park, engaging in our own version of small talk - mostly gossip about the old crew, the Doc's latest exploits, her work in the Intelligence Division and mine at HQ. In ten minutes' time, we were standing among bins of fresh produce, both of us with baskets in hand.

I still wasn't much of a cook then, so I was at a bit of a loss among all the fruits and vegetables. I selected a few tomatoes (even though the California-bred varieties couldn't hold a candle to a good old Hoosier garden tomato), a pound of grapes, a head of lettuce. I selected these items completely at random; I was far more interested in watching Seven watch the door.

The arrival of her suitor was imminent. That much was certain from the anticipatory gleam in her eye. Her discomfort with my presence was also much in evidence, given the way her eyes darted from the door to me to the basket in her hands, all in rapid succession.

I rolled my eyes and forced myself to stop watching her.

I was fully absorbed in a display of cucumbers when a soft, gentle hand touched my shoulder and a quiet voice filled my ear. "Kathryn?"

Startled, but also oddly at ease, I turned and peered up into the beautiful face of Chakotay's sister. "Sekaya!" I said, and moved to embrace her.

She smiled a hauntingly familiar smile and hugged me hard. "I've been meaning to catch up with you," she said. "How have you been?"

"Very well, thank you. I hear you've moved here permanently."

"I'd never been here before I came to greet my brother. I fell in love with the California coast immediately and couldn't wait to come back."

"It is lovely here, isn't it?"

She nodded. "I'm very happy to have found a home here, since so little remains of my own."

"And it must be doubly nice to be so close to Chakotay." I glanced around the deli. "You've met Seven, haven't you?"

Sekaya grinned. "Yes," she said. She looked over my shoulder with a twinkle in her eyes. "I certainly have."

I turned just in time to see Seven smile as well, and the expression was so warm, so enchanted, for a moment it took my breath away. "Oh," I said vaguely, distracted by Seven's rapture. As I picked up a fat cucumber without any idea of what I might do with it, I peeked up at Sekaya again, who was gazing at Seven with open admiration. I practically shouted my sudden understanding. "OH!"

Sekaya laughed out loud. She and Seven exchanged a long and meaningful glance while I tried to recover from this revelation. "This is certainly a surprise," I said.

Seven quirked a pale eyebrow at me. "That is precisely what Chakotay said."

"I just bet it is."

Sekaya reached out and took Seven's hand and drew the younger woman close to her side. "My brother was frankly a little shocked."

"But pleased," Seven added quickly. "After a time."

"It makes sense," Sekaya said. "My brother and I are a lot alike."

"But there are differences," Seven said. "Temperamental. Philosophical. Anatomical."

Sekaya leered at her, and I tossed the fat cucumber back into the bin, certain it was burning my hand.

So this was what Chakotay had needed to process. Our entire conversation clicked into a different context and I found myself smiling. "I'm sure he's thrilled for you both," I said. "Although I'm certain it'll be a while before his ego recovers." I winked at Seven, who blushed furiously. _Maybe just about a month_, I thought.

The two women exchanged another glance, this time more sober than the last. "He did not tell you about us?" Sekaya asked.

"No. Although we've barely spoken in the last couple of months, so it's not unusual that it didn't come up."

"The fact that you have barely spoken surprises me, Admiral," Seven said. "Chakotay…thinks very highly of you."

I felt my cheeks redden. I wondered just how much Chakotay had shared with her. "I think very highly of him as well."

Sekaya lowered her chin in a manner that reminded me fiercely of her brother. "I had hoped he would contact you as soon as his relationship with Seven had ended. We talked about it many times. I encouraged him. I am sorry he did not."

In that instant, I made a decision that was probably rash, but that changed my life – all of our lives – for the better. "I asked him out," I blurted. "On a date. Three dates. He turned me down every time."

"Every time?" Sekaya asked.

"Every time. He claims to be too busy."

Seven's eyebrows climbed up her head. Sekaya rocked back slightly and tossed her long, glossy hair over her shoulder. "He is afraid," she said.

Seven nodded. "He is also working too hard."

I nodded. "I just talked to him a few minutes ago. He says he owes his students his best, but he'll be no good to them if he wears himself out."

Both women stilled suddenly. "Is he in his office?" Seven asked.

I nodded. "He looks exhausted." The realization came to me as I replayed our conversation in my head. "He looks at the end of his rope, to be honest. I haven't seen him like that in years."

Sekaya's full lips pressed together in a tight line. Wordlessly, she retrieved an empty basket and began to move through the deli, selecting fresh fruits and vegetables and items from the deli case as she went along. "He can be very singleminded."

"A quality you share with him, Admiral," Seven added.

I frowned at my protégée. "Singlemindedness got us home, Seven."

"True," she conceded. "But at what personal cost? And is it really necessary to be so singleminded now that we are in the Alpha quadrant?"

"I guess it's a hard habit to break."

"And my brother is nothing if not a creature of habit." Sekaya spoke briefly to the young Betazed behind the deli counter, accepted two containers, and then turned to me with a smile. "It is time to break that particular habit." She put the two containers in her basket and offered it to me.

Bewildered, I took it. "What's this?"

"Dinner for you and Chakotay," Seven explained.

Sekaya pointed to a container in the basket. "Tofu fajitas with corn and cabbage slaw and avocado crema," she said, and moved to the next container. "Turtle bean stew with roasted red peppers." She burrowed through the basket and pulled out a bag of peaches and a pint of raspberries. "Dessert."

Seven took a bottle of Chardonnay from her own basket. "And a toast to new beginnings."

I stared at Sekaya and Seven, dark and fair, so different from each other but so united in their love for Chakotay, and felt a lump rise in my throat. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much for the thought, but…I'm not sure this will work."

Sekaya smiled a smile I'd seen a thousand times on another face. Kind, patient, and so tender. "It will work."

After so many years of denying what I felt for Chakotay, it was a reflex to look for an excuse not to take this leap. "But he's turned me down three times."

Seven shook her head lightly. "Because he fears making this change as much as you do, Admiral."

Tears filled my eyes. "I don't know what to say."

Sekaya, eyes dancing, pulled out her personal comm. "Sekaya to Chakotay," she said.

His sweet, soft voice answered at once. _"Hey, Sky,"_ he said. _"What's up?"_

All three of us rolled our eyes at the tortured pun. "Are you still at the office?"

_"__For at least a couple of hours."_

"I assume you have not eaten."

_"__Not since breakfast,"_ he sighed. _"No time."_

"I am sending you dinner," Sekaya said.

_"__Thanks, but you don't need to bother. I can pick something up in the commissary."_

"You have complained incessantly about the commissary food, Commander," Seven said. "We are sending food from Green's market."

_"__The new one on the pier?"_

How was I the only person in Starfleet not to know about this place?

"We found a few things we think you'll like," Sekaya said. "We're sending the delivery now."

Chakotay sighed again, and I could picture him shaking his head at their doggedness. _"Thanks, both of you. I'll alert the transporter kiosk in the building."_

"We are sending a live delivery person," Seven said, giving me a sidelong glance. "She'll be there in fifteen minutes."

_"'__She'? You're not trying to set me up, are you?"_

I stifled a laugh.

"Not exactly," Sekaya said. "Be on the lookout for a cute redhead with a basket full of goodies."

He chuckled. _"Does that make me the Big Bad Wolf?"_

_God, I hope so_, I thought, and bolted from the deli, dinner in hand.

The walk back to the Presidio and the Academy grounds took approximately forever. I rehearsed what I would say to him, but in the back of my mind I knew it didn't really matter. Whatever happened from this moment forward would be perfect. It had to be. Perfection was the only thing I would accept.

Outside his Academy office, I paused to straighten my uniform, fluff my hair, and recall what all the containers in the basket held, just so I wouldn't look like an idiot when I served it to him. Then I took a deep breath and triggered the door chime.

The door slid open at once to reveal a tiny, windowless adjunct professor's office. There was also an abused-looking sofa in the office, a battered coffee table and a beverage replicator, but not much else. Chakotay, handsome as ever in his professor's gray and black uniform, was seated behind a small desk piled high with books and PADDs. He didn't even look up from his work. "Just leave it on the table," he said, "and thanks."

"I'm not sure the table's big enough for all of this," I said, and his head snapped up.

"Kathryn!" He stood abruptly, dislodging half a dozen PADDs in the process, and darted out from behind the desk. "What are you doing here?"

"Moonlighting as Green's delivery girl," I said, and we both smiled.

"Sekaya and Seven sent you."

"Yes. I ran into Seven at the corner of Laguna and Bay, and then Sekaya met us at the market, and…" I shrugged.

"So you know," he said.

"I do, and I think it's wonderful."

He looked away for a second, then turned back to me with a wide smile. "So do I," he said. "Spirits help me, I think it's wonderful, too."

And just like that, we slid back into our friendship as if the last couple of years, as if Kashyk and Ransom and Teero and Seven, had never even happened.

We both sat down on the threadbare sofa and dove into the dinner Sekaya had chosen for us. Halfway through the bottle of wine – which we passed back and forth like a couple of teenagers raiding their parents' liquor cabinet – I turned and sat sideways on the sofa, my bare feet tucked up under me. "So did you suspect?" I asked.

"About Sekaya and Seven?" I nodded, and he shrugged. "Sekaya has been in relationships with both men and women ever since she was a teenager. So that was nothing new. We actually used to give each other dating advice when we were kids. We have weirdly similar tastes in women."

I quirked an eyebrow at him. "So I gathered."

The man had the good grace to blush, but went on as if he hadn't noticed the barb. "But Seven…that surprised me at first. Then I thought about the way my relationship with her was progressing – or _wasn't_ progressing, actually – and it made sense."

"I found myself replaying every interaction I ever had with her to see if I could find a clue."

"B'Elanna said the same thing." He chuckled. "And to be honest, so did I. Some things that had happened between us suddenly made a lot more sense."

_Anatomical differences_, I thought, but decided to keep that little revelation to myself. "I'm happy for them."

"So am I." He clasped my hand in his. "And I'm thrilled you ran into them today and they sent you to me."

A part of me wanted to pounce on that admission, but I knew he wasn't quite ready to make that leap in our relationship. "They think you're working too hard."

"I know. Maybe I am."

"But you love it."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't work so hard at it. My students deserve the best that I can give them. But it's exhausting. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and wonder how I'm going to get through it all."

"But you do."

"I do. Somehow I do."

I squeezed his fingers in mine. "Sounds familiar, doesn't it?"

He nodded toward the leavings of dinner on the table in front of us. "Although with a role reversal. Not that I'm complaining." The look he gave me then was very warm, and very sly. "I have to admit I kind of like the idea of you coming here to save me from myself. Even if my sister and my ex are the ones who talked you into it."

"I didn't need much persuading."

"I like that even better." He favored me again with that heated look, the one that promised all sorts of delicious secrets, but this time I was the one not quite ready to make the leap.

I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms around my bent knees. "Tell me what's so consuming about your schedule. Maybe I can help."

He shook his head with a small smile. "Actually, I think I'd like to take a break from all that. Tell me what you've been up to, Kathryn. I've missed you."

So I filled him in on my life since the return to the Alpha quadrant – the reunion with my family, the boredom of my extended leave, the new duties I'd been assigned as Admiral. After a while I noticed his eyelids drooping, so I blathered on for another ten minutes as I watched him succumb to wine and exhaustion. I maneuvered his legs up onto the sofa, eased the stiff new boots off his feet, and covered him with an afghan I found in the storage compartment behind his desk. Clearly, he'd spent the night in this office before.

I placed my hand on his cheek. "Pleasant dreams, Professor," I whispered.

He wriggled down into the sofa. "Thanks," he murmured, and then, in a voice so soft and sleepy I almost missed it, "Love you, Kathryn."

=/\=

I have led a somewhat charmed life.

I have always known this.

Oh, there have been heartaches. Daddy and Justin's deaths. Cardassian imprisonment. Seven years of exile in the Delta quadrant, and all the guilt and self-doubt that exile inspired.

For the most part, though, I've been very fortunate. I've been healthy and strong, surrounded by family and friends. I am the beneficiary of centuries of education and training, the culmination of a philosophy of peaceful exploration that has seen humanity leap to the frontiers of the Universe. I, Kathryn Elizabeth Janeway, am a very lucky woman.

But in that moment, with Chakotay's soft words ringing through my head, I realized something: My life isn't as charmed as I always thought it was. It's been quite a story, but certainly no fairy tale.

Because if my life were a fairy tale, my prince would have awakened at that moment, mortified at his verbal slip up. "Wait," he would have said. "Did I just say I loved you?" That realization would have precipitated a lengthy and flustered conversation – probably very comical – riddled with denials and evasions, culminating in my own admission of love. We would have kissed, then, like the hero and heroine in the climax of so many of those wretched 2D movies Tom used to show in the Holodeck.

But my life isn't a fairy tale.

And that's not what happened.

No, upon this unconscious and unguarded admission of love, Chakotay, my former first officer, closest friend, and not-yet lover, rolled over and went to sleep.

Not only that, he proceeded to sleep for three hours.

_Three damn hours._

Once I realized he wasn't going to wake up – and I knew he needed the sleep, so as much as I wanted to I didn't bother him – I got up from the coffee table where I'd sat down so hard I was certain I'd bruised my tailbone. I paced. I puttered. I cleaned up the dinner containers and I tidied up his office. I read his syllabus for next term, exasperated to find that his upcoming schedule was even more robust than his current one. I even found the rubric for the papers he'd been trying to grade and prepared a PADD with my notes on each student's submission, which I'd found in a pile on the corner of his desk.

After two and a half hours, I sat down in his desk chair and waited.

I've always thought that Chakotay is just about the sexiest thing ever to walk on two legs.

But I'd not yet had the opportunity to watch him sleep. Not since New Earth, anyway, but that was different. Looking at him the way I was looking at him now, as a woman looking at a man she was ready to just _devour_, was an indulgence I couldn't allow myself in the Delta quadrant. It was too dangerous, too tempting, too raw.

He's a beautiful man. Truly. And in sleep, he's completely at ease and open. To this day, he looks at least ten years younger in sleep. The lines of care melt away and he becomes relaxed, almost boyish in repose.

I found myself staring at him from across the office, memorizing the tiniest details of him. The crookedness of his long nose, the strands of gray in his hair, the angle of his knees, the way his hand lay flat against his belly, the steady rise and fall of his broad chest.

I was so fixated on these particulars that I almost didn't notice it when he woke up. When he caught me staring at him, he smiled. "You're still here." I nodded mutely. "What time is it?"

"Almost 2200."

He yawned. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you. Why didn't you wake me up?"

"You seemed to need it."

"Probably so." He swung his legs off the sofa and sat up. "Thanks again for dinner, Kathryn. Even if it was Sekaya and Seven's idea."

"Well, if the mountain won't come to Mohammad…" I said.

He frowned. "What?"

I raised my chin at him. "I didn't want to wait a month."

He gave me a crooked smile. "About that…"

"You really didn't want to wait a month, either. Did you?"

He shook his head. "But I thought I needed the time to…" He rolled his shoulders. "To find the words. To find the _right_ words to tell you everything that I feel."

I rose and strolled out from behind the desk and leaned against it, facing him. "You don't know, do you?"

Surprised by my apparent change of the subject, he blinked and frowned. "Know what?"

"What you said."

His furtive gaze darted around the office as if the words might be scrawled on the walls. "I said something? When?"

"As you were falling asleep. I said, 'Pleasant dreams, Professor,' and then you said—"

"'Thanks,'" he breathed, his eyes wide with the realization. "'Love you, Kathryn.'"

I nodded slowly. We stared at each other in that cramped little room.

"So I finally said it," he murmured, almost to himself. "Surely that's not a complete surprise to you."

"No." I took a slow step toward him. "Not even after Seven."

"We need to talk about that."

"But not tonight." Another step.

He quirked an eyebrow at me and leaned back into the sofa, his arms trailing along the back. He was trying to project an air of ease, but I could see the tension – and the anticipation – in his expression. "No?"

"No."

"Why not?" I was close enough now that he had to tilt his head against the back of the sofa to look up at me. "What are we doing tonight?"

"Just this," I said, straddled his lap, and kissed him.

My Aunt Martha once told me that you will know when you've kissed the last person you will ever kiss. I didn't believe her until that moment.

I'd like to say something poetic here, maybe that he tasted of raspberries and wine and love, but in fact I had no time to spare to catalog the flavor, because the man's hands were suddenly everywhere – pushing through my hair, trailing down my back, kneading my ass and pulling me hard into his big, solid body.

Half a minute later, his lips were on my neck, his hands were in my uniform, and I was writhing in his lap. I managed to strip him of his jacket and turtleneck, and finally got to _see_ the broad, solid shoulders and firm chest I'd been fondling for most of a decade. "You are _magnificent_," I said. "You know that, right? _Damn magnificent._"

He gave me a crooked grin, slipped my tank top over my head, and took a breast into his mouth so suddenly that I nearly died of the pleasure.

Seven years.

Seven years of denial and frustration and speculation, seven years of _wanting_, finally coming to an end.

We couldn't get the rest of our clothes off fast enough.

Unencumbered at last, I straddled his lap again, and nuzzled the fine lines on his brow. "You're gorgeous," he whispered against my collarbone.

"As gorgeous as Seven?" I don't know what made me ask it; maybe a moment of insecurity, maybe a sudden need to know I was truly the woman he wanted.

"More. So much more." He took my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes, and I felt the mystical, transcendent connection we'd had since that first moment on the Bridge, when I'd first experienced the animal pull of the last man I would ever love, snap and sizzle. "There's no comparison, Kathryn. There never was. I think I must have lost my mind for a while. Because it's you. It's always _been_ you."

I nodded. "Good," I said. "And I'd like to point out one crucial difference between Seven and me."

He pulled me to him, skin against skin. I raised my hips and lowered them slowly, centimeter by centimeter. "I know," I whispered, "_exactly…_what to do…with…_this_."

It was a night to remember.

=/\=

My husband polishes off the last of the Chardonnay and rubs his stubbled chin with his fingertips. "So that's what you're going to tell them," he says.

"That's it." I raise an eyebrow at him. "Don't you think that's enough?"

He twirls his empty wineglass in his fingertips. "You could set the record straight on a few other things, you know."

"Such as?"

"Magruder. And T'Leth."

My husband is right. Because it is at this point in our story that rumor becomes legend, legend becomes myth, and myth unfortunately obscures Truth.

"Magruder was an old busybody," I say. "And he's been dead for at least ten years."

"True. But the story's still around."

All right, here's that Truth: Contrary to the claims of old Professor Magruder who was working late that night in the office directly below, Chakotay and I did not spend the next three hours arguing with each other at the top of our lungs.

Screaming, yes.

Arguing, no.

And the incessant pounding he heard was really nothing to worry about, nothing at all, which is exactly what we told the Security officer who called Chakotay's office at 2300. To this day I can't believe the man bought our story about the comm console's video link being down, but he accepted our voice-only explanation that Professor Chakotay had decided to rearrange his office furniture at 2300 on a Thursday night.

As for Chakotay's teaching assistant, Lieutenant T'Leth: When she strolled into Chakotay's office at 0700 the next morning she did not, in fact, find us _in flagrante delicto_.

She may have claimed that, and it's a great story, but it isn't true.

Not quite, anyway.

Another minute and, well…

She saw enough, I suppose, and when she ran into Tom and B'Elanna in the commissary later that day, they filled in the rest. And that is how we managed to keep the change in our relationship secret for less than eight hours.

Which was two hours more than we managed to keep our elopement to Risa a secret.

But that is a different Truth entirely, and a tale for another chapter.

-END-

**NOTE**: So Kate Mulgrew's been talking for months about writing her memoirs. Every time she does, I picture myself in a bookstore flipping through the hardcover looking for a chapter that begins: "Robert Beltran is about the sexiest man ever to walk the Earth." That flight of fancy inspired this story. I hope you liked it!


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